Editorial: First, end the atrocities in Syria

As international talks in search of a cease-fire and regime change in Syria get under way last week in Switzerland, there is a humanitarian disaster unfolding that must take top priority.

Photos of the corpses of more than 11,000 people reportedly starved, tortured and executed in jails controlled by President Bashar Assad have been smuggled out of Syria by a police photographer. Those photos are part of what has been described as a "voluminous archive" of documents on which Assadís logged every chilling detail of the torture and murder of Syrians suspected of helping the rebels.

While thousands have been killed or imprisoned, tens of thousands more are trapped in rebel-controlled territories without food, water and medicine Ė and Assad will not let humanitarian relief reach them. It now appears Assad has unconscionably embraced starvation as a weapon of war.

Despite the mounting evidence of atrocities, achieving the ultimate goal of the United Nations diplomatic summit in Geneva - easing Assad from power - is a long shot. Assad still controls his government and Syriaís capital. His military, well-stocked with weaponry thanks to his chief ally, Russia, has fought the rebels to a standstill, and they are now fighting each other.

The U.S. should continue to demand Assad step down, though we must remain open to a negotiated ceasefire and some arrangement that restores stability, even if it falls short of that goal.

But negotiators for the U.S., the United Nations and other parties to the talks demand an end to atrocities and mass starvation. They must demand a verifiable end to the systematic killing and press the Assad regime for a show of good faith: an agreement to allow convoys carrying humanitarian aid to reach suffering civilians.

About 250,000 civilians are isolated in rebel-held areas besieged by government forces, out of reach of aid deliveries, according to the United Nations. Millions more are in areas that are barely accessible. Aid workers have had little success negotiating access to the sick and starving in a country where about 9 million people - nearly half the population - have been driven from their homes since the civil war began in 2011.

Standing by as preventable tragedy claims innocent lives offends the conscience and could erode U.S. influence as the world's lone superpower. But military intervention is out of the question. The United States has no compelling national interest in this war, is repulsed by the bloodthirsty Assad regime and is sensibly unwilling to aid an opposition dominated by radical Islamists.

But now that both sides in the conflict have joined the United States and others in negotiations, the immediate priority must be ending the atrocities.